Part 36 (1/2)
The Boers waited with their little force drawn up in line and facing the black far-stretching veldt, every man wondering which two of their party had been traitor and pursuer, and naturally waited in vain.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
QUERY: FREEDOM?
The dash for liberty had been well carried out, West getting his st.u.r.dy pony into a swinging gallop before he had gone far, and keeping it up straight away till he could hear Ingleborough's shout in close pursuit, when he drew rein a little, till in its efforts to rejoin its companion the second pony raced up alongside.
”Bravo, West, lad!” panted Ingleborough, in a low tone that sounded terribly loud in their ears, which magnified everything in their excitement. ”It's a pity you are not in the regulars!”
”Why?”
”You'd soon be a general!”
”Rubbis.h.!.+” said West shortly. ”Don't talk or they'll be on us! Can you hear them coming?”
”No; and I don't believe they will come! They'll leave it to me to catch you. I say, I didn't kill you when I fired, did I?”
”No,” said West, with a little laugh, ”but you made me jump each time!
The sensation was rather queer.”
”I took aim at an angle of forty-five degrees with the horizon or thereabouts, to be exact,” said Ingleborough pedantically; ”and those two, my first shots with a Mauser rifle, no doubt have travelled a couple of miles at what they call a high trajectory. But what glorious luck!”
”Yes; I never dared to hope that the plan would succeed so well.”
”Talk about humbugging anyone--why, it was splendid!”
”But oughtn't we to go off at right angles now?” said West anxiously, as he turned himself in his saddle and listened.
”Quite time enough to do that when we hear them tearing along in full pursuit, and that will not be to-night.”
”Think not?”
”I feel sure of it, lad! Of course they can't hatch it out in their thick skulls that their two prisoners were the actors in this little drama: they can't know till they get back that we have escaped.”
”Of course not.”
”And you may depend upon it that they'll stand fast for about a quarter of an hour waiting for me to come back, either with my prisoner alive or with his scalp--I mean his rifle, ammunition, and pony.”
”And when they find that you don't come back?” said West, laughing to himself.
”Then they'll say that you've taken my scalp and gone on home with it: think it is just the fortune of war, and promise themselves that they'll ride out by daylight to save my body from the Aasvogels and bury it out of sight.”
”And by degrees they will put that and that together,” said West, ”and find that they have been thoroughly tricked.”
”Yes, and poor Anson will distil pearly tears from those beautiful eyes of his, and we shall not be there to see them rolling down his fat cheeks. West, lad, I never yet wanted to kill a man.”
”Of course not, and you don't now!”
”That's quite correct, lad; but I should like to be a grand inquisitor sitting on Master Anson for his renegade ways and superintending in the torture-chamber. My word, shouldn't he have the question of the water; no, the rack; or better still, the extraction of his nails. Stop a minute: I think hanging from the ceiling by his wrists with a weight attached to his ankles, and a grand finish-off with the question of fire would be more fitting. Bless him for a walking tallow sausage, wouldn't he burn!”